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So those who are in the proximity say: “Excuse us, but we are the Steelypips, we have no dread, we don’t live on a planet but in a machine instead, and it’s no ordinary machine but a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, so beat it, nasty thing, or you’ll be sorry.”

But that just sits there.

So, not to go to any great expense, they send not a very big, actually a rather small scarechrome: it’ll go and frighten that off, and peace will reign once more.

The scarechrome sets off, and all you can hear inside are its programs whirring, one more frightening than the next. It approaches—how it hisses, how it spits! It even scares itself a little—but that just sits there. The scarechrome tries once more, this time on a different frequency, but by now it just doesn’t have its heart in it.

The Steelypips see that something else is needed. They say: “Let’s take a higher caliber, hydraulic, differential-exponential, plastic, stochastic, and with plenty of muscle. It won’t cower if it has nuclear power.”

So they sent it off, universal, reversible, double-barreled, feedback on every track, all systems go heigh-ho, and inside one mechanic and one mechanist, and that’s not all because just to be on the safe side they stuck a scarechrome on top. It arrived, so well-oiled you could hear a pin drop—it winds up for the swing and counts down: four quarters, three quarters, two quarters, one quarter, no quarter! Ka-boom! what a blow! See the mushroom grow! The mushroom with the radioactive glow! And the oil bubbles, the gears chatter, the mechanic and the mechanist peer out the hatch: can you imagine, not even a scratch.

The Steelypips held a council of war and then built a mechanism which in turn built a metamechanism which in turn built such a megalomechanism that the closest stars had to step back. And in the middle of it was a machine with cogs and wheels and in the middle of that a servospook, because they really meant business now.

The megalomechanism gathered up all its strength and let go! Thunder, rumbling, clatter, a mushroom so huge you’d need an ocean to make soup out of it, the clenching of teeth, darkness, so much darkness you can’t even tell what’s what. The Steelypips look—nothing, not a thing, just all their mechanisms lying around like so much scrap metal and without a sign of life.

Now they rolled up their sleeves. “After all,” they say, “we are mechanics and mechanists, all mechanically minded, and we have a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, so how can this nasty thing just sit there and not budge?”

This time they make nothing less than an enormous cyberivy-bushwhacker: it’ll creep up casually, as if minding its own business, glance over its shoulder, grow a little bolder, send out a root or two, grow up from behind, taking its time, and then when it closes in, that’ll be the end of that. And truly, everything happened exactly as predicted, except, when it was over, that wasn’t exactly the end of that, not at all.

They fell into despair, and they didn’t even know what to think because this had never happened to them before, so they mobilized and analyzed, made nets and glues, lariats and screws, traps and contraptions to make it drown, break it down, make it fall, or maybe wall it up—they try this way and that and the other, but one is as poor as another. They turn everything upside-down, but nothing helps. They’re about ready to give up hope when suddenly they see—someone’s coming: he’s on horseback, but no, horses don’t have wheels—it must be a bicycle, but wait, bicycles don’t have prows, so maybe it’s a rocket, but rockets don’t have saddles. What he’s riding no one can tell, but who’s in the saddle we all know well: it’s Trurl himself, the constructor, out on a spree, or maybe on one of his famous sallies, serene and smiling, coming closer, flying by—but even from a distance you’d know that this wasn’t just anybody.

He lowers, he hovers, so they tell him the whole story: “We are the Steelypips, we have a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, we saved up all our atoms, put them all together ourselves, we hadn’t a care, no spats in our vats, no rules, no schools,until something flew up, landed, sat down and won’t budge.”

“Did you try scaring it off?” Trurl asks with a kindly smile.

“We tried a scarechrome and a servospook and a megalo-mechanism, all hydraulic and high caliber, spouting mesons like caissons, pi- and mu- and neutrinos too, protons and photons, but nothing worked.”

“No machine, you say?”

“No sir, no machine.” .

“H’m, interesting. And what exactly is it?”

“That we don’t know. It appeared, flew here, what it is nobody knows, except that it’s hideous and no matter from which angle you look at it, it’s even more hideous. It flew up, landed, so heavy you can’t imagine, and just sits there. But it’s an awful nuisance, all the same.”

“Well, I really don’t have much time,” says Trurl. “The most I can do is stay here for a while, in an advisory capacity. Is that agreeable with you?”

It certainly is and the Steelypips immediately ask what he wants them to bring—photons, screws, hammers, artillery, or how about some dynamite, or TNT? And would our guest like coffee or tea? From a vending machine, of course.

“Coffee’s fine,” agrees Trurl, “not for me, but for the business at hand. As for the rest of it, I don’t think so. You see, if neither scarechrome, nor servospook, nor cyberivy-bushwhacker will do the job, then other methods are indicated: archaic and archival, legalistic hence sadistic. I’ve yet to see the remittance due and payable in full fail.”

“Come again?” ask the Steelypips, but Trurl, rather than explain, continues:

“It’s quite simple, really. All you need is paper, ink, stamps and seals, sealing wax and thumbtacks, sand to sprinkle, blotters, a teller window, a zinc teaspoon, a saucer—the coffee we already have—and a mailman. And something to write with—do you have that?”

“We’ll get it!” And they take off.

Trurl pulls up a chair and dictates: “Notice is hereby given, that in re hindrance of Tenant, as stated under Rev. Stat. c.117(e) dash 2 dash KKP4 of the CTSP Comm. Code, in clear violation of paragraph 199, thereby constituting a most reprehendable offense, we do declare the termination, desummation and full cessation of all services accruing thereunto, by authority of Ordinance 67 DPO No. 14(j) 1101 et seq., on this the 19th day of the 17th month of the current year, aff’g 77 F. Supp. 301. The Tenant may appeal said action by extraordinary procedure to the Chairman of the Board within twenty-four hours.”

Trurl attaches the seal, affixes the stamp, has it entered in the Central Ledger, consults the Official Register, and says:

“Now let the mailman deliver it.”

The mailman takes it, they wait, they wait, the mailman returns.

“Did you deliver it?” asks Trurl.